The end-of-year means precious few new podcasts episodes and an overabundance of retrospectives and prognostications.

• 10 Important Lessons We Learned from the 2010s (markmanson.net): It’s illuminating to see how intertwined some of the biggest trends of the past decade are, things like social media, attention, minimalism and learning.
• Ask HN: Which is the Most Successful One-Person Business You Heard of in 2019? (ycombinator.com): The entrepreneur in me loves threads like this because you get to see all the interesting projects people are working on that fly well below the radar of the mainstream media.
• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python (automatetheboringstuff.com): Al Sweigart’s excellent introduction to the Python programming language gets an update in this revised 2nd edition. The book is available for free online or you can pay for a physical copy from No Starch Press.
• Esports Predictions 2020 (medium.com): If you have been following the fascinating rise of Esports in the past decades, you’ll enjoy this forecast from venture capitalist Blake Robbins.
• How Focus Became More Valuable Than Intelligence (alexand.ro): The author articulates many of the struggles that I’ve dealt with for my entire life: “A wasted day may lead to a wasted life.”
• I Killed My Teenagers Fancy College Dreams. You Should, Too (slate.com): 45 million Americans owe a collective $1.6 trillion in student debt.
• I Wasted $40k on a Fantastic Startup Idea (tjcx.me): Cautionary entrepreneurial tale that a good idea (and engineering hubris) isn’t sufficient for a good business.
• Media Roundup 2020 (medium.com): A list of media winners and losers of the 2010s. Losers: The Economist, WSJ, New York Times. Winners: Bloomberg, Washington Post.
• Mormon Women Are Caught Between Economic Pressures and the Word of God (qz.com): “Male graduates of BYU earn 90 times more than their female peers, with a median income of $71,900 by the age of 34. Female graduates, on the other hand, earn on average $800 per year.”
• The Savior Elite: Inside the Special Operations Force Tasked with Rescuing Navy SEALs (esquire.com): Learn about the Air Force Parajumpers, the soldiers who fly to the rescue when Navy SEALs call 911.
• What Will Happen in the 2020s (avc.com): Union Square Ventures founder Fred Wilson gives us his short-list of technology predictions.